How to start/stop the servers?

Graphical tool

The native installers include a graphical tool to manage the servers easily. You can find the "manager-windows.exe", "manager-osx" or "manager-linux" tool in your installation directory. Using this tool, you can Start, Stop or Restart the servers and check the log files. You can click on the icon to start it.

On Windows: You can also start the Manager tool from shortcuts: Start -> Program Files -> Bitnami Stack -> Manager tool

Command line tool

If you prefer, you can use the "ctlscript.sh" utility from the command line. This script is in the installation directory.

On Virtual Machines and Cloud images:

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

A native installer on Linux:

$ cd ~/application-version
$ ./ctlscript.sh start

On OS X: You can start the Manager tool from the installation directory or you can use the "ctlscript.sh" utility from a Terminal.

How to create a full backup of Alfresco Stack?

Backup

Bitnami stacks are self-contained and the simplest option for performing a backup is to copy or compress the Bitnami stack installation directory. To do so in a safe manner, you will need to stop all servers, so this method may not be appropriate if you have people accessing the application continuously.

Cloud Server

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory in which you wish to save your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Create a compressed file with the stack contents.

$ sudo tar -pczvf application-backup.tar.gz /opt/bitnami

Restart all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.tar.gz file to a safe location.

Virtual Machine

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory in which you wish to save your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Create a compressed file with the stack contents.

$ sudo tar -pczvf application-backup.tar.gz /opt/bitnami

Restart all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.tar.gz file to a safe location.

Native Installer (Windows)

Follow these steps:

Stop all servers using the shortcuts in the Start Menu or the graphical manager tool.

Create a compressed file with the stack contents. You can use a graphical tool like 7-Zip or WinZip.

Stop all servers using the shortcuts in the Start Menu or the graphical manager tool.

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.zip file to a safe location.

Native Installer (Linux and Mac OS X)

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory in which you wish to save your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo installdir/ctlscript.sh stop

Create a compressed file with the stack contents.

$ sudo tar -pczvf application-backup.tar.gz installdir

Restart all servers.

$ sudo installdir/ctlscript.sh start

You should now download or transfer the application-backup.tar.gz file to a safe location.

Tabs end

Restore

Bitnami stacks are self-contained, so to restore a stack, you only need to uncompress the backup file in the same location. It is important to use the same path that was used when the stack was originally installed.

Cloud Server

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory containing your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Rename the current directory to save it.

$ sudo mv /opt/bitnami /opt/bitnamiBackup

Uncompress the backup file to the original directory.

$ sudo tar -pxzvf application-backup.tar.gz -C /

Start all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

Virtual Machine

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory containing your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Rename the current directory to save it.

$ sudo mv /opt/bitnami /opt/bitnamiBackup

Uncompress the backup file to the original directory.

$ sudo tar -pxzvf application-backup.tar.gz -C /

Start all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

Native Installer (Windows)

Follow these steps:

Uncompress the backup file to the original directory.

Install services by launching a new command prompt and executing the following commands. Administrator privileges are required.

$ cd installdir
$ serviceinstall.bat INSTALL

You can now start or stop servers using the graphical manager tool.

Native Installer (Linux and Mac OS X)

Follow these steps:

Change to the directory containing your backup.

cd /your/directory

Stop all servers.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Rename the current directory to save it.

$ sudo mv installdirinstalldirBackup

Uncompress the backup file to the original directory.

$ sudo tar -pxzvf application-backup.tar.gz -C /

Start all servers.

$ sudo installdir/ctlscript.sh start

Tabs end

IMPORTANT: When restoring, remember to maintain the original permissions for the files and folders. For example, if you originally installed the stack as 'root', make sure that the restored files are owned by 'root'.

If you want to create only a database backup, refer to these instructions for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

How to upgrade Alfresco?

It is strongly recommended to create a backup before starting the update process. If you have important data, create and try to restore a backup to ensure that everything works properly.

There are two different ways to upgrade your application.

You can upgrade the application and all stack components, such as PHP, Ruby, MySQL and Apache.

How to change the default URL?

The best way to change your URL in BCH is to go to your application tab and modify it there. In the Bitnami Cloud Hosting console, select Servers, choose your server, Manage and go to the Applications tab. Press there the pencil next to the application which URL you want to modify and choose Use Custom Domain.

Some applications require to update the IP/domain if the machine IP/domain changes. The bnconfig tool also has an option which updates the IP automatically during boot, called machine_hostname (use --help to check if that option is available for your application). Note that this tool changes the URL to http://NEW_DOMAIN/alfresco.

Some applications require to update the IP/domain if the machine IP/domain changes. The bnconfig tool also has an option which updates the IP , called machine_hostname (use --help to check if that option is available for your application). Note that this tool changes the URL to http://NEW_DOMAIN/alfresco.

installdir/apps/alfresco/bnconfig --machine_hostname NEW_DOMAIN

If you already moved your application to the root URL you should include both options at the same time.

How to configure Java memory settings on Alfresco?

These are the default memory settings for Java:

JAVA_OPTS="-XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Xms256m -Xmx512m"

You can increase these Java settings for you application if it is necessary. You can find them in the /installdir/apache-tomcat/bin/setenv.sh file for native installers for Linux and OS X. For Cloud Images you can find the Java memory settings in the /opt/bitnami/java/bitnami/setenv.sh.

export JAVA_OPTS="-XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms256M -Xmx768M $JAVA_OPTS"

IMPORTANT: This file is a symlink to a "micro-setenv.sh", "small-setenv.sh"... depending on the instance type that you are currently using. The symlink will be automtically changed when you resize your server.

For Windows you should modify the /installdir/apache-tomcat/bin/setenv.bat and reinstall the services.

How to enable Google Docs integration with Alfresco?

Since Bitnami Alfresco 4.2.c-1 version, you can easily enable Alfresco integration with Google Docs. Before you enable Google Docs integration, set up a Google Docs account that will be used for administrative purposes for the integration between Alfresco and Google Docs.

It is only necessary to edit the "installdir/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties" file and set the following options:

Maybe you are trying to create a google docs document in your repository directly. It is necessary to create an Alfresco site and create the Google Document in the "Document Library".

How to install a plugin on Alfresco?

Alfresco have package modules called AMPs which you can install on top of the basic installation.

To install any AMP on top of the Bitnami Alfresco, you can follow the same steps that you can see to install Alfresco Records management Module.

Download alfresco-community-dod5015-3.4.d.zip and extract the files

Move the alfresco-community-dod5015-3.4.d.amp file to the amps directory. There are two directories depending on the AMP is for the "/alfresco" application or for the "/share" application. On Linux and Mac OS X you can execute: $ mv *.amp installdir/apps/alfresco/amps or $ mv *.amp installdir/apps/alfresco/amps_share

You can use "sudo" if you are using the Virtual Machine or the Amazon Cloud Images.

Stop the Apache Tomcat server. You can use the Manager tool or the commands below. $ cd installdir $ ./ctlscript.sh stop tomcat

Run the apply_amps command, which is in the root Alfresco directory. On Windows execute the apply_amps.bat script. On Unix and Mac OS X you can execute the below. $ cd installdir/apps/alfresco $ ./apply_amps.sh

You can use "sudo" if you are using the Virtual Machine or the Amazon Cloud Images. It is necessary to change the permissions of the new war files:

$ sudo chown -R tomcat:tomcat /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/webapps

Start the Apache Tomcat server. You can use the Manager tool or the commands below. $ ./ctlscript start tomcat

How to install SharePoint Protocol Support AMP?

SharePoint Protocol Support allows you to edit documents in Alfresco using Microsoft Office. To install it, download the package from the Alfresco official site. When this guide was written, the Alfresco version was 4.2.f so we are going to use it in the examples.

The steps described here use /opt/bitnami as installation directory. Use your own installation directory if you are using a native installed. The chown command is not needed in case you installed Alfresco as normal user.

After that, you can access from any machine to the Alfresco SharePoint Module using a browser through

http://YOUR_DOMAIN:7070/

SharePoint Module main page

Finally, you can open your Alfresco Files directly using Microsoft Word. Click Open and insert the URL in the File Name field.

Opening Alfresco in Microsoft Word

That's all, you have now your SharePoint Module up and running.

How to configure the email settings of Alfresco?

Outbound email configuration

To send emails from Alfresco application via SMTP protocol, it is necessary to specify the SMTP settings in the installdir/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties file. The following example shows how to configure Alfresco using a GMail account:

We configure the Tomcat server to use the "tomcat" user and not the root user for security reasons. The problem is that Tomcat does not have privileges to bind the 25 port, so you need to specify another port, 2025 for instance, and then create a port forwarding rule in your system to redirect all requests from 25 port to 2025 port. It is only necessary to run the following command:

How to enable CIFS and/or FTP for Alfresco?

To enable CIFS in Alfresco it is necessary to open the 445 port. If you have installed the Native Stack you probably have access to that but if you are using the Virtual Appliance or the AMI it is necessary to open this port.

This guide to know how to open a port in the Virtual Appliances firewall or this guide to open a port in Bitnami Cloud Hosting.

The Virtual Machines and AMIs have an internal FTP server installed. You can also enable to access to it. In this case it is necessary to open the 21 port in the firewall and comment the following line in the /etc/vsftpd.conf file:

The reason is that alfresco tries to start a SMB/CIFS server using ports below 1024, and that operation is not allowed by a normal user. You'll have to open {installdir}/apache-tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties and uncomment these lines:

#cifs.tcpipSMB.port=1445

#cifs.netBIOSSMB.sessionPort=1139

#cifs.netBIOSSMB.namePort=1137

#cifs.netBIOSSMB.datagramPort=1138

How to configure a redirect for main page to /share?

Alfresco runs in the "/share" URL by default. If you want to add a simple redirection from your main domain to the "/share" application, you can add the following at the beginning of the file in the "/opt/bitnami/apps/alfresco/conf/httpd-app.conf" file.